Sept. 10, 2011
Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Caroline McCall
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
617-253-1682
cmcall5@mit.edu
RELEASE: 11-293
NASA LAUNCHES MISSION TO STUDY MOON FROM CRUST TO CORE
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's twin lunar Gravity Recovery and
Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station in Florida at 9:08 a.m. EDT Saturday to study the
moon in unprecedented detail.
GRAIL-A is scheduled to reach the moon on New Year's Eve 2011, while
GRAIL-B will arrive New Year's Day 2012. The two solar-powered
spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits around the moon to measure its
gravity field. GRAIL will answer longstanding questions about the
moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and
other rocky planets in the solar system formed.
"If there was ever any doubt that Florida's Space Coast would continue
to be open for business, that thought was drowned out by the roar of
today's GRAIL launch," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "GRAIL
and many other exciting upcoming missions make clear that NASA is
taking its next big leap into deep space exploration, and the space
industry continues to provide the jobs and workers needed to support
this critical effort."
The spacecraft were launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II
rocket. GRAIL mission controllers acquired a signal from GRAIL-A at
10:29 a.m. GRAIL-B's signal was eight minutes later. The telemetry
downlinked from both spacecraft indicates they have deployed their
solar panels and are operating as expected.
"Our GRAIL twins have Earth in their rearview mirrors and the moon in
their sights," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The mission team is
ready to test, analyze and fine tune our spacecraft over the next
three-and-a-half months on our journey to lunar orbit."
The straight-line distance from Earth to the moon is approximately
250,000 miles (402,336 kilometers). NASA's Apollo moon crews needed
approximately three days to cover that distance. However, each
spacecraft will take approximately 3.5 months and cover more than 2.5
million miles (4 million kilometers) to arrive. This low-energy
trajectory results in the longer travel time. The size of the launch
vehicle allows more time for spacecraft check-out and time to update
plans for lunar operations. The science collection phase for GRAIL is
expected to last 82 days.
"Since the earliest humans looked skyward, they have been fascinated
by the moon," said GRAIL principal investigator Maria Zuber from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "GRAIL will take
lunar exploration to a new level, providing an unprecedented
characterization of the moon's interior that will advance
understanding of how the moon formed and evolved."
JPL manages the GRAIL mission. It is part of the Discovery Program
managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. Launch
management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch
Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
For more information about GRAIL, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/grail
http://grail.nasa.gov
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